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Legal threat to Irish deal in Prague

THE Irish property developers Sean Mulryan and Paddy Kelly face potential legal action in their bid to buy the Kotva department store in Prague following a dispute over legal title to the property.

James Woolf, the chairman of Flow East, a property investment company in the Czech capital, claims he will seek compensation from the pair if, as expected, their €40m-plus purchase of the building is completed by the end of June.

Woolf says he had a deal to buy the centre in the late 1990s from a company called Trend. This deal, he claims, was not honoured and the ownership of Kotva passed over to the Cyprus-based firm Forminster Enterprises, which now controls the centre. The shares were transferred to Forminster by the former management at Trend, which went bankrupt in early 2000. Wolf has since fought a five-year battle for financial compensation.